Nelson Bailey, a Palm Beach County judge, had some elective surgery for his diverticulitis. When he was released from the hospital the discomfort in his belly didn't get any better, reports the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

That was because the surgeon left a sponge inside his body — and it remained there for almost a year before it was detected.

"It got to the point where I was having more pain than I had gone in to have the surgery for in the first place,'' Bailey told the Sun-Sentinel. "I was just fading away. I was losing weight. Some of the lawyers that work with me thought I was dying.''

And that's not all that went wrong.

While he was recuperating from surgery, Bailey said a doctor prescribed a drug to lower his blood pressure. But the hospital pharmacy sent the wrong medication, and the nurse administered it without checking the label, the judge said.

Comments

Sounds more like two nurses let the doctor down in the OR, since the scrub nurse is charged with accountability of what's used and an RN is supposed to verify the count.
Ditto for the failure of the nurse who didn't verify the meds prior to administering.

Clearly a doctor posted this blaming the nurses. The Doctor is God and Captain of Ship in OR and it is his fault. Not to mention failing to think "hmmm - why still in pain" Too many doctors do surgery and then treat patient like poop with attitude "I fixed you - why still bitching - must be mental".

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BARBARA HIJEK has spent the best years of her life doing news research in Florida, the most news-warpy place in the universe. She's still passed all her drug tests and remains Prozac free. Barbara graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in her hometown. Talk about culture shock! She is single and has lived in Fort Lauderdale for the past decade. Prior to that Barbara lived in Clearwater for a dozen years. Truly a bicoastal Floridian. And she still can't figure out which coast is wackier...